


close encounters of the cavity kind

by leeinthesky



Category: Candy Jar (2018)
Genre: F/M, FIRST CANDY JAR FIC ON AO3, GO US, Happy halloween, Not Actually Unrequited Love, That gets resolved, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Unresolved Emotional Tension, anyways they're cute, candy porn, graveyards!, intentional lack of capital letters, nerds holding hands, not really they're just sugar ants, the moms are happy, they love their guidance counselor okay?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 08:34:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16489232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leeinthesky/pseuds/leeinthesky
Summary: split it wit my biddyfiddy-fiddy, down the linekinda like "close encounters of the 'cavity' kind"i'm talkin licorice kissestalkin chocodile smiles"in the seconds it takes her mom to read the email and start screeching like a pterodactyl, lona grabs her phone and taps bennett’s contact. he answers on the first ring and all lona can hear is georgia’s most promising state senator trying to break the sound barrier.‘I was just about to call you,’ bennett says. he sounds like he’s laughing. or crying. maybe he’s doing both. his mom continues to scream in the background.‘I called you first, though,’ she shoots back because she needs to argue with him a little, orshe’sgoing to cry. "otherwise known as the fic where lona and bennett finally talk about feelings. a little. because they had to be doingsomethingbetween the last debate and prom.





	close encounters of the cavity kind

**Author's Note:**

> first candy jar fic on ao3!!!!!! woo hoo!
> 
> honestly, I just loved this movie so much. lona and bennett deserve all the love in the world (especially from each other lol)
> 
> I don't own these characters, only the plot, you know the drill. the title and lyrics in the summary are from the song 'I want candy' by mc chris

it’s not their first choices, respectively, but they get in.

_they get in._

yale and harvard. lona can’t believe it, honestly; that first rejection from harvard had her reeling and she couldn’t help but feeling like she’d been lied to when told she’d been told she could do it. lona’s smart and she knows it, but it’s like she told her mom all those weeks ago. they don’t just want someone who’s smart. 

and then she gets into yale. 

she reads the email in her room and screams so loud that her mom _actually gets up_ from antiques roadshow to come see what’s wrong. lona can’t even answer her frenzied questions because she’s already calculating average yearly cost and scholarships and thinking about debate and law school and _ohmygodbennett!_

in the seconds it takes her mom to read the email and start screeching like a pterodactyl, lona grabs her phone and taps bennett’s contact. he answers on the first ring and all lona can hear is georgia’s most promising state senator trying to break the sound barrier. 

‘I was just about to call you,’ bennett says. he sounds like he’s laughing. or crying. maybe he’s doing both. his mom continues to scream in the background. 

‘I called you first, though,’ she shoots back because she needs to argue with him a little, or _she’s_ going to cry. 

he laughs and it’s almost like lona can see him. she can picture the way his eyes scrunch up and the shake in his shoulders and how he’s probably banging his head against the ridiculously large table in his dining room. ‘I can hear your mom screaming all the way at my house, so i’m assuming you got in.’

‘are you sure it’s not your mom? all of atlanta can hear her!’ lona’s definitely crying now, because oh my god, yale. ‘we did it, bennett. we got in.’

‘I knew we would.’ bennett sounds proud, but lona’s known him long enough to hear the difference in his voice and know that he’s crying as well. her mom has stopped screaming and is now trying to smother her in a well-meaning hug. ms. russell has also stopped screaming, which either means she’s passed out or is doing the same to bennett. ‘think you can get out tonight? I feel like there’s something we need to do.’ 

♔

lona watches from the front porch as bennett pulls up in his ridiculous car. she can see his odd expression and it worries her a little bit because today is a happy day and he should be celebrating. 

she doesn’t want to think about why his happiness is so important to her. 

so lona just watches his smile grow as she gets in his car and groans playfully as he lowers the top of his car. he doesn’t immediately tell her where they’re going, so she figures it must be a surprise. it’s surely surprising when bennett pulls into the dollar store down the street from her house and lona feels like the build up was a little much for this. 

bennett must see the disappointment because he laughs and gets out of the car. ‘don’t worry, this isn’t our final stop,’ he assures lona as he pulls her out. he’s got an obvious destination in mind, because he immediately pulls lona towards the candy isle and begins to pull bags randomly from the shelves. ‘c’mon, pick whatever you want!’

bennett’s odd expression from earlier is gone, replaced by a look that may be total glee and lona has to give in to his demands. she starts to match his total abandon and grabs ten huge bags of candy _at least_. oh, well. if bennett russell was going to drag her out of her house to an unknown location, he could buy her ten dollars of candy. the exhausted kid at the register gives them a weird second glance, but rings up their mountain of sugar anyways. 

♔

they get back in the car but bennett still won’t tell lona where they’re going. she’s tried every tactic in her book, but he won’t crack and fill her in. she almost doesn’t say anything until bennett pulls onto the interstate towards the city.

‘bennett, where the hell are we going? it kind of feels like you’re kidnapping me,’ lona asks again, curiosity outshinning her desire to prove to bennett that she can take his little surprises. 

he side-eyes her from the driver’s side. the top is back up now and lona is almost upset that she can’t watch the streetlights illuminate his face. ‘buckhead, if you must know.’

‘buckhead?’ lona glances down at her ratty jeans, t-shirt, and beat up sneakers. buckhead is a nice part of atlanta. she’s not dressed for buckhead, she can’t afford buckhead, and she looks at bennett’s nice clothes and nice car and hates him just a little bit. what she wouldn’t give to have it half as easy as he has it. 

‘yes, but we’re not going anywhere crazy. don’t worry about it, skinner, I can feel you overthinking it from here. I just want to show you something,’ bennett assures her. he turns to look at her now and his face is so open, so earnest, so _honest_ that the sharp pang of hate melts away. 

lona doesn’t know how to respond to this so she just hits the button to pull the top of the car down and stares forward. bennett laughs, but it’s carried away in the wind and the sound of other cars on I-75. he turns up the radio and lona’s surprised to hear the moody opening of lorde resonate from the car’s speakers and into her bones. it’s her turn to laugh- who’d have thought? bennett russell, singing her lorde songs word for word while they drive out from under the city lights and back into suburbia. a few months earlier, and both have them would have said it could never happen. if you had told lona skinner four months ago that she’d be going along with bennett russell’s totally consensual kidnapping, what would she have said? could lona see her life now without him? 

_that’s too much_ , lona’s brain chides her. _too dramatic. file that away for another time_ , it whispers, and lona generally listens to her brain because it is generally correct, so she does. 

♔

bennett finally pulls off of the interstate. although it’s late, his fancy car fits in perfectly with the others on the road. even the gas stations are nice up here, lona notices. bennett comes to a stoplight and seems to hesitate. lona grins, if he’s lost, this would be the perfect time to hold it over him. 

‘you lost, russell?’ she asks cheekily. 

his reply is fast. ‘no way, skinner. just debating- do we go the scenic route or the totally boring route?’

‘are you for or against?’

‘for, definitely.’

‘and seeing as I don’t have any prior knowledge, your choice it is. take us the scenic route, sir.’

bennett smiles as he takes the turn. lona doesn’t have time to take in the fact that it makes her stomach flip before she’s gasping out loud. so _this_ is what bennett meant when he said scenic route. on either sides of the street are huge mansions with sprawling lawns- how could anyone need that much space? there are fountains out front and some even have _guard towers_ for god’s sake. they pass the governor’s mansion and it looks hopelessly small next to the other houses, which is insane because lona remembers going there on a school field trip and actually getting lost in its halls. 

lona can’t even bring herself to care that bennett is watching her out of the corner of his eye. his expression is odd again, but this time it’s a good odd. he looks…fond, almost. it’s a nice change from the vaguely annoyed/vaguely amused expression he always seems to have when he looks at her. 

bennett finally slows down and takes a turn. lona can’t help it, the laughter bubbles up inside her until it spills out and the annoyed/amused expression comes back. 

they’re in a _graveyard._

‘oh my god, you’re definitely going to murder me,’ lona chokes out, trying to contain herself. 

bennett shakes his head and parks the car. ‘shut up, lo. grab your candy and follow me. try not to fall in any open graves.’ he’s definitely smiling, tiny glimpses of white teeth pushing themselves past full lips. 

the use of a nickname shakes her to the point where lona can only grab her candy and jump out of the car. why? it’s not like the use of nicknames is earth shattering. lona can’t recall anyone even calling her anything other than just ‘lona’- it’s only two syllables so really a nickname would be overkill. so why did bennett shortening her name by one syllable leave her feeling like a school girl with a crush?

 _maybe because you are a school girl with a crush_ , her heart supplies helpfully. 

_shut up_ , her brain answers. 

but really, lona scoffs internally. a crush? on bennett russell? no way. it could never happen, mostly based on the fact that they were technically still arch rivals because lona hadn’t found anyone to replace him yet, she muses as she glances up to regard him in the moonlight. he’s got a nice face she guesses, soft but still angular, and she likes the dimple he gets when he smiles. bennett’s got a nice jawline, something lona had never noticed before. she unconsciously lets her eyes fall to his lips and remembers how they feel against hers and how he tasted like her mom’s cookies and smelled like aftershave. 

_oh, shit_ , lona thinks weakly. 

_yuuuupppppp_ , her heart says. 

lona’s thinking so hard that she stops looking where she’s going and doesn’t even have time to think before she’s falling into the massive hole next to her. suddenly bennett is grabbing her and pulling her away from her death, or at least a broken bone and all lona can think about is that he’s so goddamn close to her. she’s pulled up against his chest, both of them breathing heavily from the adrenaline. 

‘I thought I told you _not_ to fall into any open graves, skinner,’ bennett says, leaning in slightly.

lona parts her lips unintentionally, tilting her head back, and thinks about how perfectly they would slit together if she just raised up on her toes a little bit. but bennett rocks back on his heels and smirks as if he’s proved a point before grabbing her hand and pulling her over another hill. what was she thinking? lona couldn’t kiss bennett, it just couldn’t happen. (she seemingly forgot that it almost did happen.)

♔

they make it over the last crest before bennett comes to a complete stop.

‘finally found the spot where you’re planning to kill me?’ lona jokes. he raises an eyebrow and gestures vaguely to the plot in front of them.

and lona practically stops breathing.

the gravestone in front of them is covered in jars and jars of candy. it reads...

‘kathy,’ she breathes out. ‘you brought us to see kathy.’

bennett looks sort of sheepish. ‘I thought she’d have wanted to know. y’know, about the acceptances.’

lona can’t believe it. every single day, bennett does something that causes her to rethink her whole image of him. he’d practically kidnapped her so she could tell the only other person whose opinion truly mattered to her about something lona had been looking forward to for years. 

all she can do is watch and try not to cry as bennett carefully kneels down and methodically begins to open the jars, dump the old candy into an empty bag, and refill the jars with the new candy he’d bought. he’d obviously done this before, and lona is momentarily lost in the steady way his hands hold the jars and the look of concentration on his face.

once she is able to snap out of her trace, lona plops to the ground next to him and opens her own jar. then it’s bennett’s turn to look surprised.

‘well, do you want help or not?’ she asks him, raising her eyebrows exactly like she would have if they were practicing for a debate or arguing in the halls at school.

it brings a smile back to bennett’s face. he knows how to play this game. ‘I just didn’t think you’d want to get all dirty kneeling in the mud, princess.’

lona’s hands stutter and it takes her a minute to realize that he’s calling her a princess and not using it as a pet name.

‘I got these jeans for five dollars at rainbow. they’re not exactly high fashion, russell. and if I get dirty, it means your dumb car will get dirty, so I’m willing to sacrifice them for the greater good,’ she finally gets out.

‘mhmm,’ comes his cool reply, almost as if he knows what he’s doing. he probably does.

♔

they finally finish, and sit back with a sigh. it’s quiet even though they’re still technically in the city, but lona can’t decide if it’s just the general ‘graveyard’ feel or if the world has actually cumulatively decided to give her and bennett an unbroken ambiance.

bennett sighs and cracks open a bag of skittles.

‘a couple weeks ago, I was having an absolutely shitty day,’ he started. ‘I mean, my anxiety was through the roof about college and I was so disappointed about yale that I just started to spiral. when that used to happen, I would go straight to kathy, but now…you know. don’t get me wrong, the new guidance counselor is nice, but-’

‘he’s not kathy,’ lona nods. she knows what he means.

‘exactly. so I just got in my car and started driving. before I knew it, I was at her house, sobbing and banging on the door.’ he huffs out a laugh. ‘I scared the shit out of her husband. but he took one look at me, pulled me inside and handed me a lollipop.’

now that makes lona laugh. it’s exactly the kind of thing kathy would have done.

‘he made me tea and made me breathe,’ bennett continues. ‘it just made me feel like being in her office again. I mean, the house even smelled like her. suddenly, I just burst out. I asked him how he could stay in that house when everything just seemed like kathy.’

bennett pauses for a moment and lona takes the opportunity to look at him. he has his head tilted up towards the sky and his eyes closed, like he’s waiting for rain or divine intervention or really just anything at all.

‘he told me you can’t run away from the bad things that happen to you. that you can’t just leave something behind and try to forget about it, because everything happens for a reason. maybe kathy had to get hit by that drunk driver because her husband needed to become an activist. maybe I would have gone to yale and hated it. maybe massachusetts would have been too cold for you.’ bennett takes a breath. ‘or maybe we needed to lose those debates and be horrible overachievers so that we would work together and become friends.’

bennett stops talking, so lona figures he’s done with his little speech. 

‘you know, she’s the one who convinced me that I should team up with you,’ lona nods in the direction of the headstone.

‘me too,’ bennett smiles at her softly. ‘said maybe I’d like you more than I’d thought, and she ended up being right. kathy the matchmaker.’

now _that_ was the most overt thing he’d ever said to lona. she’s still trying to decide whether or not she’s going to do this ‘will we won’t we’ tango with him when he offers her a skittle.

she makes a decision.

instead of opening her hand so he can drop it in her palm like he so clearly expects, lona leans over and takes the skittle from between his fingers with her mouth and grins at him.

‘holy shit,’ is all bennett can whisper, hand frozen out in front of him.

she leans back with a satisfied smirk and opens her twizzlers. bennett sits in stunned silence. she gets through maybe three twizzlers before bennett finds his voice.

‘do you think it would be totally rude to the memories of all of the filthy rich people buried in here if I kissed you right now?’ he asks slowly, almost as if he’s still concerned she’ll get up and leave.

lona looks around at all of the graves around them. ‘know anyone else buried here?’

‘I think my great aunt might be in here somewhere,’ he says. he has the amused/annoyed look again. it is infinitely more fond.

‘did you like her?’

his shoulders lift in a halfhearted shrug. ‘I don’t really remember her. she died when I was like five.’

‘then why does it matter?’

bennett’s eyes do the gooey thing they did that night in lona’s dining room that makes her forget they’re in the middle of a graveyard and feel like she’s the only person he’ll ever look at again. it’s gotten chilly out but his hands are warm when he places them on either side of her face and the goosebumps on her arms are for a whole other reason than the breeze. as they bring their lips closer together lona’s eyes flutter shut once again and all she can think is that this is what she’s been waiting for.

unlike that night at her house, the kiss is not unsure. both of them know what they want and are willing to go for it, and what starts off as simple kiss quickly turns the kind of makeout session that lona would have blushed at the thought of before. one of bennett’s hands leaves lona’s face to grab her waist and pull her forward towards him. lona gasps and bennett takes the opportunity to slip his tongue into her mouth. 

now, the kissing experience lona has is…limited. (really, it’s only the one time she kissed ronnie shepard in the sixth grade and watching the end scene of pride and prejudice (dir. joe wright, 2005) many, many times.) but really, she imagines, bennett’s isn’t much more extensive. so this move is bold from someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing and lona is not about to let him get away with it. pulling out the only sure move she has, lona bites softly on bennett’s lower lip until he lets out something that can only be described as a ‘breathy moan’ and slides his hands into her hair. 

god, lona thinks to herself. she sounds like she’s writing fanfiction.

when they finally break apart, lona can feel how messed up her hair is. dark as it is out, the moonlight betrays how flushed bennett is and how heavy he’s breathing. lona knows she can’t look or sound much better.

‘can you believe we used to hate each other?’ bennett asks once he can breathe normally.

‘abominable,’ lona replies with an entirely straight face. it makes him laugh (eyes closed and nose scrunched, god, could she look at him laugh forever) and he flops back onto the grass.

‘you know,’ she says, looking down at him. ‘I haven’t actually found a new arch enemy, so you’re still it until I find one.’

he looks at her like she hung the moon and stars.

‘if you do this with all your archenemies, I’m gonna have to ask you not to find another one.’

lona just laughs and drops to the ground next to him.

‘yeah. I don’t think I could ever replace you.’  


bennett’s happy smile tells her she is right. as insufferable as he is, lona has never and probably will never meet another person like him. they both have a lot of work and stress ahead of them but somehow lona knows she can get through it all with him. 

he wasn’t her first choice, but he _was_ her only choice.

♔

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! let me know what you thought in the comments :)
> 
> fun fact: the working title of this fic was 'sucking too hard on your lollipop' from the song lollipop by mika
> 
> come yell with me about these nerds on my tumblr! doctor-sharpe


End file.
